Mind you, had you asked the question before the election most people would have found it difficult to say what the Lib Dems stood for then. Think it’s still too early to judge yet. Let’s give it a year or so and see what it looks like then.

“Only 78 per cent of people who voted Liberal Democrat last month said they would vote the same way if another election was held tomorrow; 17 per cent said they would support Labour instead.”

I read a great deal about how LibDem voters were going to feel betrayed etc. etc. so I think a 17% ‘defection’ rate is surprisingly low

#2 I actually think it’s surprisingly high. Most people don’t want to feel their vote was wasted or that they were duped, and the language of betrayal is never particularly attractive to most people. I’m sure the vast majority of Lib Dem voters are willing to “give the coalition a chance” even if they have reservations, so a defection rate of 17% already is very high indeed.

People keep claiming Lib Dem voters are defecting to Labour, yet in last week’s real election in Thirsk and Malton it was the Lib Dem vote that went up, while Labour’s vote fell by 10%. Labour fell to third place, and the Lib Dems are now in second place to the Conservatives there. I think a lot of the claims are wishful thinking by Labour!

17% is more than 1m people saying they would now vote Labour. Plus another 5% saying they would vote “other”.
Whilst I wouldn’t get too desperate (or in my own case positive) about this just yet, it must surely be of concern that after only 3 weeks, so many people say they no longer know what the party stands for.

The problem for the LibDems will be to “reinvent” themselves and make it clear what they do stand for, whilst in coalition government with a party which, potentially, more than 1m of their voters would vote against, and when more than half of their MPs are within the executive and therefore governed by the rules of the government collective.

tim f

Whether 17% is surprisingly small or “very high indeed” depends on your priors. Given all the outraged convulsions from progressive bloggers after Clegg did the deal with the devil, one might have expected closer to 50% abandoning the party in disgust. I think a mere 17% shows the outraged progressive bloggers were out of step with voters.

I wonder after the average election what percentage of voters say they’d “vote the same way if another election was held tomorrow” a month later. What’s the baseline here?

Worth remembering that parties that win an election normally go up in the first post-election polls. In 2001 and 2005 Labour went up about 2-3% in the first polls after the election, in 1997 it went up 19%(!), in 1992 the Tories went up 2%.

I guess Lib Dem supporters have to hope that once Danny Alexander and George Osborne start slashing public services, their fall in support will end and they will become more popular.

I guess Lib Dem supporters have to hope that once Danny Alexander and George Osborne start slashing public services, their fall in support will end and they will become more popular.

Meanwhile Labour voters can hope that the ascension of Ed Balls to the leadership will usher in a golden age for the left.

I’m not sure in this period of compromised leadership and a junior partner in that leadership, that they no what they stand for.

Meanwhile Labour voters can hope that the ascension of Ed Balls to the leadership will usher in a golden age for the left.

I’d be careful of using what right-wing bloggers say as a barometer of how Ed Balls is going to behave in the future.

After all, right-wing bloggers said a lot about the election that didn’t turn out to be quite true eh?

@4

The effective by-election is somewhat incomparable to the general election.

It had a low turnout and the Lib Dems and Tories ran their soft campaigns towards eachother as they knew their parties were aligned in government.

Add to that that Labour’s national fall in the vote in May 6 masked a rise in heartland support (Look at places like East London for example) at the expense of sharp falls in wealthier places – and it is a little surprising Labour fell only so far as it did in an affluent by-election.

But even so – Lib Dem support shouldn’t be too badly lost just by doing a deal with the Tories. Only when figleaves such as pretending they might get electoral reform from the deal fall will dissatisfaction really harden.

That should see a lot of the left of the party leave, and so help Clegg draw in more right of centre support in order to re-align his party as more natural allies of the Tories.

—-

I have already been reminded by this coalitoon of what my grandad once told me.

If the Liberals had ever meant what they said – the working man wouldn’t have needed to form a Labour Party.

“I have already been reminded by this coalitoon of what my grandad once told me.

If the Liberals had ever meant what they said – the working man wouldn’t have needed to form a Labour Party.”

Yep, because the Labour Party has been completely honest and trustworthy in power, hasn’t it? Oh, wait.